Jago & Litefoot

One of the smartest decisions the Big Finish production company ever made was to further extend its Doctor Who audio releases by creating its range of Companion Chronicles talking books. And one of their finest releases from that range was The Mahogany Murderers, featuring theatre manager Henry Gordon Jago and police pathologist Professor George Litefoot.

They originally made their (sole) TV appearance in the 1977 Victorian extravaganza, The Talons of Weng-Chiang by Robert Holmes, a story which is seen by most fans as one of the very best, if not the best, Doctor Who adventures. It was a six-part season finale that climaxed the first three years of Tom Baker’s tenure in the role, with the actor at the height of his popularity.

The duo of Professor Litefoot, an upperclass gentleman, with the voluble cockney showman Henry Gordon Jago was immediately recognised as being a winning combination and there was apparently even talk of a spin off BBC series at the time. Cut to over thirty years later … And perhaps the second best idea Big Finish has ever had!

For this listener little has matched the delight of Jago and Litefoot being spun off into their own series of fantastical ‘infernal investigations’ set in the Baghdad on the Thames atmosphere of Late Victorian London, reuniting Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter as the fruity duo – these releases are amongst the cream of Big Finish’s output. There was lots of variety, including one series set in the 1960s and another that introduced Arthur Conan Doyle as a sidekick. The series concluded much too soon with its thirteenth season, following the death of Trevor Baxter in July 2017. The series got a special send-off with the one-off release, Jago and Litefoot Forever, released in May 2018.

Doctor Who SpecialsDoctor Who: Voyage to Venus by Jonathan MorrisDoctor Who: Voyage to the New World by Matthew SweetDoctor Who: The Justice of Jalxar by John DorneyThe Sixth Doctor: The Last Adventure: Stage Fright by Matt FittonDoctor Who: The Beast of Kravenos by Justin Richards